1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for setting an operative attitude to be assumed by each furniture to be accommodated in a furniture accommodating chamber of a furniture raising/lowering type floor equipment wherein a plurality of furnitures such as chairs, tables or the like mounted for a building such as a hall, a theater, a gymnasium or the like are accommodated in the furniture accommodating chamber when they are not in use. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus of the foregoing type wherein the apparatus assures that the operative attitude to be assumed by each furniture can be set automatically.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a variety of research and development works have been earnestly conducted for providing a various kinds of floor equipments so as to meet the requirement for multi-purposed utilization of a building such a hall, a theater, a gymnasium or the like. As is well known, the foregoing kind of floor equipments are generally classified into an expansible/contractible type floor equipment and a raising/lowering type floor equipment. The present invention is concerned with the latter type of floor equipment. Most of this type of conventional floor equipments are usually constructed such that an array of, e.g., chairs (jointed to each other in the side-by-side relationship) are mounted on the floor surface of the building so as to allow each audience to enjoy a performance while sitting on his chair. However, when the performance is over, each chair becomes merely a kind of obstacle. To avoid this inconvenience, many conventional furniture raising/lowering type floor equipments have been constructed such that the chairs mounted on the floor surface of the building are flatly folded when they are not in use, and they are then accommodated together with their feet in a chair accommodating chamber below the floor surface of the building. When the chairs are to be in use, they are taken out of the chair accommodating chamber and then unfolded to stand upright on the floor surface of the building.
With each of the conventional raising/lowering type floor equipments constructed in the above-described manner, when the chairs are to be in use, the chairs which have been accommodated in the chair accommodating chamber are raised up therefrom and then unfolded and inclined in the rearward direction together with back rests. On the contrary, when the chairs are to be not in use, they are flatly folded and then accommodated again in the chair accommodating chamber. However, such folding and unfolding operations as mentioned above are very complicated and time-consuming. In addition, there is a need of firmly holding the chairs while maintaining their correct operative attitude but few attention has been hitherto paid to a mechanism for allowing the respective chairs to maintain their correct operative attitude not only when they are practically used on the floor surface of the building but also when they are not in use.